


Avatar: The Maroon Hero, Book One: Creation

by RedBadgerBerry



Series: Avatar: The Maroon Hero [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Bad Flirting, Caboose Can Talk to Spirits, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical language, Comedy, Developing Relationship, Gen, How Do I Tag, Huggins is a Jackalope, I hope, I love these dumb idiots, Minor Character Death, No Beta We Die Like PFL Agents, Non-graphic injuries, Playing fast and loose with canon rules, Post-Avatar: The Legend of Korra, Pre-Relationship, Road Trips, Simmons and His Gay Spirit Mums, Simmons is the Avatar, Slow Burn, avatar AU, everyone is awkward, everyone is bi, pov shifts a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29689440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedBadgerBerry/pseuds/RedBadgerBerry
Summary: The Avatar has been missing for almost 40 years. Many think the cycle ended with Korra's death, others think they must be hiding somewhere in the Earth Kingdom. Simmons, however, knows exactly where the Avatar is. They're busy being the family disappointment in a made up admin position in Republic City, crushing on their desk mate and stopping their boss from setting them all on fire, all while trying to hide that they are being haunted by one of their past lives (literally).Oh, and they're apparently going on a spirit quest with three blue idiots.Great.
Relationships: Dexter Grif/Dick Simmons, Leonard L. Church/Agent Texas (past), Michael J. Caboose/Leonard L. Church
Series: Avatar: The Maroon Hero [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2181807
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	Avatar: The Maroon Hero, Book One: Creation

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my rambling mess of an Avatar AU, realising that both my current fics start with watching two people grow up as I switch between their POVs, oh well, it's info dumping but...like...classy? Idk. If you like it give me a comment, if you don't give me one anyway, I need the human contact.
> 
> Warnings for: butchering canon Avatar lore, minor character deaths, mentions of illness/brain trauma, shitty parenting, non graphic injuries and bullying mention. Also, language warning from here on out because it's RvB. 
> 
> The series title is, obviously, in reference to the ultimate fan guide. If you spot the little She-Ra reference then many cookies to you.

“Avatar Korra died last night at age a hundred and sixty, although she faced much controversy in her earlier years she dedicated her life to the pursuit of equality for all. She will be laid to rest beside her wife, Asami Sato, in Republic City. Rest well, Avatar Korra.”

There is a girl born in Ba Sing Se. She will have no family but the voice in her head. She is filled with potential and power and righteous fury. She wants to save the world. She will fail. As she lies in a canyon staring at the sky and trying to breathe around bubbles of her own blood, she prays that next time will be better.

_Good luck, whoever you are, I hope you can do what I couldn’t._

She dies.

There is a boy born in Caldera City. He takes his first breath and screams.

  
  
  


***

His name is Michael but mostly people call him Caboose. Caboose likes a lot of things. He likes hugs and laughing and playing in the snow (there is a lot of snow at the North Pole). He likes his sisters, even when they dress him up and pinch his cheeks. He likes his mama and papa. He likes his friend Tucker, even though he can be very annoying sometimes. But most of all, more than anything, Caboose likes Church. 

Church is nine (like him!) and kind of short. He is pale, but not like snow, more like the peaches that sometimes come from the Earth Kingdom, pink and orange and soft. His hair is black and his eyes are the kind of blue you only see on cloudless days in summer when you look right up. 

Church doesn’t seem to like very much. He doesn’t like his mama, who is gone for a reason Caboose doesn’t understand and Church never explains. He doesn’t like his papa who sent him away from his home in the Earth Kingdom. He doesn’t like mister Flowers, his papa’s friend who takes care of him. He seems to like his sister but he doesn’t talk about her much. It doesn’t matter that Church doesn’t like a lot of things, it just means it’s more special when he does like something, and Caboose is determined to make Church like him.

  
  


***

  
  


“Again.”

Simmons winces, his hands burn, the heat from his own fire is starting to cause them to blister. He is ten, his mother is sick and his father only looks at him in disappointment. He stares down a charred practice dummy, the dummy stares back. He hates it, just like he hates the training room, hates the bleached wooden walls and scratchy floor mats. Hates the whole damn estate with it’s empty, echoing rooms full of antique weapons and whispering servants.

“Junior. Again.”

“Father, my hands-”

“Will be worked until you bleed or until you learn proper control. Whichever comes first.” Simmons sometimes wonders how someone can be so cold and still be able to produce fire, “Now, do not make me say it a third time.”

He bows his head, palms cracking as he forces his hands into the sign of respect , “Yes, Father.”

Mostly he hates himself for not being the son his father wants, not being like his older brothers, being weak.

Eventually red drops patter against the pale floor and his father sweeps from the training room without a word. Simmons waits until the door shuts behind him before he starts to cry.

There is a permanent dark patch on the training room floor by the end of the year, no matter how much Simmons scrubs it the stain won’t come out. His hands have thick calluses and his fire doesn’t hurt him anymore.

***

Church does like Caboose. He also yells at him a lot but that’s ok, Church isn’t very good at affection. Church also likes Tucker, which is fine, because he knows he likes Caboose the best. They are a best friend...uh..squad? Gang? Team? Yeah, he likes team. They are a best friend team and they go on adventures together. Because they are twelve and Big Boys now they sometimes sneak onto the ice wall that surrounds the city and climb all the way up, it is very high. When he leans over the edge it makes him dizzy and his hands skid against the ice, pitching him forwards. _It is so high_ , Caboose thinks, as he falls, nothing to catch him but the ground far, far below. The last thing he hears before the lights go out is Church screaming his name.

When he wakes up he has a scar behind his left ear and a streak of his hair is white, _from the stress,_ the healers tell him.

“Like her?” he asks, pointing at the woman sitting across from him. Her dress is very blue and puffy, it doesn’t get wet when the gauzy fabric brushes the water of the healing pool, her hair glows softly in the dark room.

His mama’s voice is heavy with tears and worry, “like who, Michael?”

“The pretty lady with the white hair.” She giggles silently and waves at him, he waves back, he doesn’t see the terrified look on his mama’s face.

They take him to the spirit oasis. He wants to touch everything, it’s all so _green,_ but his mama takes his hand and leads him to the pool where Tui and La spin round and round. The elders are there, all looking serious. Caboose is scared, is he in trouble, they’re not really allowed on the wall, he knows, but it was only a game and he’s ok now.

The pretty lady appears, kneeling on the other bank, she smiles and beckons him to the water. He kneels down across from her and she gestures with her hand, nodding when he starts to reach down. The dancing spirits remind him of how Church moves when he’s practicing his water bending, smooth and hypnotic. The water is cool against his fingers and for a moment he thinks he can hear the spirits whispering to each other. _Splash!_ The twin spirits don’t stop their dance, but do flick their tails, creating jets of water that cause the spinning tide of the pool to slosh against the sides of the bank. Caboose laughs as his parent’s and the council all watch in astonishment. The white haired woman smiles before vanishing.

Apparently he’s not quite alive, or maybe a little bit dead, the elders can’t seem to make up their minds, anyway, he’s special, he can see things that other people can’t. He can even visit the spirit world! It’s very exciting! He doesn’t know why everyone’s so worried. He’s allowed to go home after a couple of days. When he’s finally settled in his own bed, Church visits him, he doesn’t speak, just crawls under the blankets next to him and cries softly into his strange new hair. Caboose holds him tight, because they are best friends.

***

  
  


His mother’s rooms have always been quieter than the rest of the house, everyone driven out by her erratic behaviour and screaming fits, the only people who visit his mother are the ones who have to and Simmons himself, his father hadn’t even looked at this side of the house for years. The walls are inlaid with pale wood lacquered in different colours to create beautiful vistas of mountains shrouded in mist and jungles with vibrant flowers, unlike the rest of the house there are no drapes and the sparse furnishings are either too heavy to move or too light and soft to cause any injury. Today is one of her better days and although Simmons knows a nurse is waiting in the other room if anything happens he lets himself relax. They drink spiced tea by the open glass doors that lead to the balcony, allowing golden light to spill over them, mother piles his plate with cakes and insists on combing his hair, the bright red strands he inherited from her tumble from their tight bun and blend with the fabric of her skirts. _“Red is the colour of luck,”_ she reminds him, _“our hair shows that we are blessed by the fire spirit Agni,”_ her voice is light and over exaggerated, the kind of voice you’d use for a small child, it comforts him anyway. 

“Oh, darling! I got you a present,” she hops up and pulls him to a large wicker basket on one of her many overstuffed, red zabutons, “open it, open it!”

The basket shifts ominously when Simmons starts opening the clasps keeping it shut, he looks at his mother’s cheerful smile and unfocused eyes and, steeling himself against whatever he’s about to uncover, flips the lid off.

He looks inside. “Oh.” Dark amber eyes peer out at him surrounded by what can only be described as a pom of white fluff, crowned by two stubbs. “A jackalope.”

His mother beams, “you’ve always been so smart.” She flaps her hands at him, “go on, pet her, her name is Huggins.” Simmons reaches out his hand for her to sniff, her fur is warm and soft as she nuzzles into his palm. As Simmons gathers the fragile limbs gently into his arms she exclaims brightly, “happy birthday!” 

His smile falters, his birthday isn’t for another five months. Huggins seems undisturbed with his change in mood and sets about investigating his left ear with wet snuffling noises, the black tips of her ears tickle his nose and he laughs. It drags against the lump in his throat and comes out as more of a choke but it still feels good, “she’s beautiful. Thank you, mother,” he kisses her hair.

“Now, you go and have fun, a young man shouldn’t spend all day entertaining his mother.”

As he leaves he wonders if she’ll even remember who he is tomorrow. 

She doesn’t.

  
  


***

  
  


Caboose grows up, he makes a spirit friend, her name is Sheila. She is very tall and strong, just like him! She is also very smart and tells him lots of things about the spirit world. He can only see her when he’s asleep or meditating, but that’s ok. When he does see her she tells him he is very special and will do lots of very important things. He’s generally a happy child, sometimes people will come to him and ask him to do something and when he does they will disappear. His mama and papa tell him that those people are dead and that Caboose is helping them ‘pass over’ he doesn’t know what that means but it sounds important, so he doesn’t really mind. 

He starts big school, it’s harder and he gets confused more often but Church and Tucker help him study. The problem was that children were mean and insecure and so would attack anyone different to make sure they weren’t at the bottom of the food chain. Anyone could see Caboose was different, from his hair to his vacant smile to his way of talking, it was like a drop of blood in a shiver of lusca. 

At first it wasn’t so bad, mean nicknames and teasing, he didn’t really pay enough attention for it to bother him. But then it got worse, some boys in the year above take to following him around, pushing him and pulling at his hair. Church and Tucker stick to him like glue but that just means the attention spreads to them as well. Caboose starts noticing that spirits gather around him whenever the boys get close, but instead of asking him to help them pass on they just circle, watching them. One day is particularly bad, the boys had been bothering them all day and they manage to corner them after school. 

They go after Church first, taunting him about how his dad didn’t want him, how he’d sent him away. The spirits gather fast, but instead of watching as they usually do they crowd around Caboose. They start on Tucker, making fun of his darker skin and thick hair, saying he wasn’t real Water Tribe. The spirits press so close he can feel their cold hands on his arms and back, digging into his flesh, they whisper to him, things he doesn’t understand, things full of vengeance and blood. The boys reach for them and Caboose wants them to stop it, stop touching him, stop hurting his friends, he wants them to just. STOP. IT.

***

_It has been so long since they have felt warmth, but this little mortal is full of it. Warmth and rage. Glorious, delicious rage. They taste the fury on their tongue and are delighted. So much anger at these boys, these bothersome children, they almost laugh, such tiny, inconsequential beings, hardly a challenge, but their host called so they will deliver._

_The Onryō open their mouths and release a thousand years of vengeance._

  
  
  


***

When Simmons is fifteen his mother dies. His brothers return for the funeral, they hadn’t so much as asked about their mother since moving to the capital, yet there they were, the dutiful sons, appropriately aggrieved. They stand in a line in the entrance hall as a parade of finely dressed men and women pass by murmuring condolences. Simmons didn’t even recognise half of them. What did they care that she was dead? They hadn’t watched as doctor after doctor tramped through her room and offered nothing but shaken heads and sympathetic smiles. Or held her as she screamed about the monsters in the walls. None of them choked on their tears as they saw no recognition in her russet eyes. He stands in the corner and doesn’t speak to anyone. 

That night Simmons runs the estate perimeter, Huggins dutifully zipping along with him, hopping in wide loops around his feet in order to keep pace. They’re far from the house now, deep in the part of the estate that’s more forest than garden and the purple shadows of dusk are causing Simmons’s eyes to strain but he keeps on running, memories and thoughts clamber for attention but he just. Keeps. Running. If he concentrates on each step then nothing is wrong, it’s just one, then the other and everything is _fine_.

Step.

_Mother crying in his arms._

Step.

_Mother lying cold and pale surrounded by tiger lilies._

Step.

_He can feel father’s eyes burning into him as he hides in his corner._

Step.

_“I’m sorry, darling, I’m so sorry, my sweet boy.”_

Ste- trip.

He flails as his foot catches on a root hidden by the growing darkness. The ground and the memory slam into him at the same time.

  
  


***

  
  


_He doesn’t know it yet but it’s his mother’s last night alive. The nurse was having trouble putting her to bed so he volunteers to help, he’s good at calming her down. She settles down easily but when he goes to leave she clings to him like a child, she’s babbling and frantic so he lies down with her, holds her hand, murmurs to her softly. As her eyes finally start to droop she whispers to him._

_“I’m sorry, darling, I’m so sorry, my sweet boy.”_

_That is the last thing she says to him. He returns to his room and in the morning she is dead._

  
  


***

The sobs shake his entire body, straining his overworked muscles. Tears and drool drip down his face as he wails into the ground. Something burning and vicious rises in his chest, bubbling and violent and churning, churning, churning as one thought repeats itself in his mind, _I just buried the only person who has ever loved me._

The feeling spills out of him as his next sob turns to a scream, heat and ash rolling out of his body and rippling across the floor until he’s left coughing on carbon flavoured bile. Huggins screeches and beggins jumping madly around him, tossing her antlers from side to side in worry. He gathers her into his arms murmuring apologies until she quiets down and begins to snuffle at his face, licking away his salty tear tracks. Simmons lets her until something strange registers in his hearing, instead of the usual crackle of fire there is a sound like the snapping of brittle glass.

He looks up. “Wha-” The ground isn’t just burned, it’s _deformed,_ rippling folds of blackened earth radiate from where he sits, they snap and pop as they cool into solid masses, and at the centre glowing bubbles of orange and yellow come to the surface.

_Lava._

“That’s impossible,” he whispers, tripping to his feet and backing away quickly. Only earth benders can create lava, and he is a fire bender, like his brothers, and his father, and his father’s father. He runs back to the house, Huggins still clutched to his chest. He was mistaken, it wasn’t lava, just overheated earth. He repeats it to himself as he slips unnoticed back into the house, as he quietly runs back to his room, as he crawls into his bed, still clutching Huggins to his chest. He was mistaken.

***

Caboose is in the hospital again. He doesn’t like being in hospital, it is very boring. One of the elders had come by and told him what happened. He’d been possessed by Onryō, vengeful spirits. They’d fed on his anger and used him as a conduit to hurt the bullies, apparently he’d screamed so loud their ears had bled and they’d passed out but otherwise they’ll be ok. Church and Tucker were unharmed, Caboose is happy, he doesn’t want to hurt his friends. When they visit him later he’s nervous.

He plays with his blanket. “Are you guys afraid of me now?”

Tucker jumps on his bed, “are you kidding? That was so cool! You’re like a superhero.” He starts waving his arms about as he describes what happened, with improvised sound effects. Church crawls into bed and holds his hand as they watch their friend. He doesn’t have to say anything. Caboose is happy.

***

  
  


That night Simmons dreams of a woman. Her brown hair is cropped on one side and falls in soft waves on the other, her mouth and eyebrows are set in serious lines but her eyes are brown and warm. She’s dressed in baggy trousers and a vest top, common sparring gear, patterned in green and brown.

_Earth kingdom,_ Simmons thinks.

“Hello,” the woman says, “my name is Connie. It is good to finally meet you, Avatar.”

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone is probably really OOC but hopefully it didn't suck. This is mostly just me trying to start writing for myself again. The illness Simmons' mum had is based off of Alzheimer's but only very very loosely. It's basically just Tragic Backstory Disease. There's also a one shot that was too big to fit comfortably anywhere called black is the colour that's about the blues meeting Tex, so check that out if you want.


End file.
